First, there are about 1.5 billion Muslims.
But, much more importantly, I want to address the whole 'peaceful vast majority' issue by using Pakistan as an example. In the last election, the leading candidate affirmed his support for applying the death penalty for 'insulting Islam'. And he wasn't even the most radical candidate. He got about 18 million votes. Now, can you honestly say those people are 'living in peace'?
Yes.
I don't support blasphemy laws at all. However, Pakistan didn't declare war on the entire non-Muslim world. They haven't invaded India, despite decades of hostility over Jammu and Kashmir, including when Modi recently clamped down on that region. Pakistan has had nuclear warheads for over 20 years, and hasn't used them.
More importantly, blasphemy laws are hardly unprecedented; they were common in Christian nations until quite recently.
Oh, and let's not forget that Christians are bombing Muslims on a pretty regular basis. That doesn't sound particularly peaceful to me.
You're condemning nearly 2 billion people because of one extreme and rarely-used law, which is not much different than what Christians used to do. Yet again, you are clearly not adopting an "academic" view, you're just hunting for excuses to attack Islam, while ignoring similar behavior by your own group.
That just doesn't hold water. The number of Muslims who willingly and happily die for the cause are doing so to get into heaven. People who drive suicide cars full of explosives to kill themselves and the 'wrong' Muslims are NOT politically motivated. It just makes no sense.
sigh
There are very few suicide bombings. They get attention because they're suicide attacks -- that's why groups do them -- but numerically they are very small.
More importantly, Muslims don't have a monopoly on suicide attacks.
For example, the infamous Kamikaze units were not Muslims. The Tamil Tigers (Sri Lankan nationalists, non-religious, but almost all Hindus) routinely engaged in suicide bombings. Different groups have used this tactic throughout history -- Russian anti-Tsar forces; Chinese suicide squads in the first half of the 20th century; Luftwaffe self-sacrifice missions.... Suicide attacks are a tactic, not a religious rite.
In fact, suicide bombings are usually a response by a dominated group to an overwhelming occupier. It's a type of asymmetric warfare that has a political goal -- e.g. "end Japanese occupation," "get the US out of Afghanistan" and so on. It's used (again) to get attention, and to signals the depth of commitment by followers to a cause. Religion is often a justification, not the primary motivation.
In fact, if you want to get *COUGH* academic about it, there is a lot of research into the psychology and sociology of violent insurgencies and extremist movements -- and it's not about the religion, it's all about social identity theory. JM Berger's
Extremism is a good place to start.
